Complete Works (374 page)

“Yes.”

“Can a person learn anything which is taught orally, if he’s completely deprived of his ability to hear somebody else?”
¹⁸

“No, by Zeus, I don’t think so.”

“So it would appear that hearing is to be classified as useful for virtue, [d] since virtue can be taught through the sense of hearing and we make use of this sense for learning.”

“Yes.”

“Since medicine can put an end to a person’s illness, it seems that sometimes medicine also may be classified as useful for virtue, if a person can acquire the sense of hearing through medicine.”

“That may be so.”

“And again, if we were to obtain medicine in exchange for property, property would obviously be useful for virtue too.” [e]

“Yes, that’s quite true.”

“Likewise also the means by which we obtain the property?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you suppose that a person could obtain money by wicked and disgraceful means, and in return get hold of the medical knowledge by which he would be able to hear after having been unable to hear, and that he could make use of that same ability for excellence or for other things of a similar kind?”

“I certainly think so.”

“Surely nothing wicked could be useful for virtue.”

“No, it couldn’t.”

“Then those things by which we obtain what is useful for one purpose or another are not necessarily also useful for that same purpose. Otherwise
[405]
bad things would sometimes appear to be useful for a good purpose. Perhaps this will make it clearer. If things are useful for one purpose or another, and this purpose couldn’t come into existence unless those things existed beforehand, tell me, what would you say about that? Can ignorance be useful for knowledge, or sickness for health, or wickedness for virtue?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yet on this we would agree, that knowledge can’t belong to a person if ignorance didn’t exist in him beforehand, that health can’t belong to him if sickness didn’t exist in him beforehand, and that excellence can’t belong to him if wickedness didn’t exist in him beforehand.”

[b] “Yes, I suppose we would.”

Then it would appear that those things which are required for the creation of something else are not necessarily also useful for that thing. Otherwise it would seem that ignorance is useful for knowledge, sickness for health, and wickedness for virtue.”

Critias was finding it very hard to go along with these arguments, that not everything we had mentioned could be property. When I realized that it would be—as the saying goes—as easy to persuade him as it is to boil [c] a stone, I said: “Let’s forget about those arguments, since we can’t agree whether or not useful things and property are the same. But what would we say about this? Would we consider a person to be more prosperous and better if his physical requirements and his requirements for day to day living were extremely numerous, or if they were as few and simple as possible? Maybe the best way to look at it would be to compare the [d] person with himself by considering whether his condition is better when he is sick or when he is healthy.”

“We certainly don’t have to consider
that
for very long.”

“No doubt it’s because everybody easily recognizes that the healthy person’s condition is superior to the sick person’s. Now then, in what circumstance would we have a greater need for all kinds of things, when we’re ill or when we’re healthy?”

“When we’re ill.”

[e] “So it’s when we’re in the worst condition that we have the most powerful and most numerous desires and needs, as far as physical pleasures are concerned?”

“Yes.”

“And just as a person is in the best condition when he himself has the fewest requirements of that kind, can the same reasoning apply to two people, where one’s desires and needs are powerful and numerous, while the other’s are few and gentle? For example, consider anybody at all who is a gambler, or a drunkard, or else a glutton—all such conditions amount to nothing but desires.”

“Exactly.”

“But all these desires are nothing but the need for something; and those who have the greatest needs are in a worse condition than those who have no needs at all or as few as possible.”
[406]

“As far as I’m concerned, people like that are certainly in a very bad state; the more they need the worse off they are.”

“And so do we think that things can’t be useful for some purpose unless we need them for that purpose?”

“That’s right.”

“Then if we suppose that these things are useful for taking care of the body’s needs, mustn’t we also require them for this purpose?”

“I think so.”

“So the person who possesses the largest number of useful things for this purpose would also appear to
require
the largest number of things for this purpose, since he’s bound to require all the things that are useful.”

“That’s how it seems to me.”

“According to this argument, at least, it appears that those who have a lot of property must also need many of the things required to take care of the body, since property was seen as useful for this purpose. So the wealthiest people would necessarily appear to us to be in the worst condition, since they are in need of the greatest number of these things.”

1
. Accepting the emendation
talanton hen
in b2.

2
. The king of Persia, proverbially wealthy.

3
. One of the wealthiest men in Athens, noted for his lavish spending on the sophists. See
Apology
20a; the events of
Protagoras
take place in his house.

4
. A professional educator (sophist); see
Protagoras
315d, 337a ff. The Lyceum was a public space just outside the walls of Athens.

5
. Early seventh-century-
B.C.
composer of iambic and elegiac poems. The line quoted is in frg. 70 Edmonds (Loeb)
Elegy and Iambus,
vol. 2.

6
. Accepting the conjectural deletion of
kai
before
andra
in c4.

7
. Accepting the emendation
epetelesaton
in d2.

8
. A coin; the Athenian stater was 17.5 grams of silver.

9
. Accepting the conjectural deletion of
tou sid
ē
rou
in b1.

10
. Parian marble; or else a red precious stone.

11
. Accepting the emendation
blepein
in a2.

12
. Assigning these two paragraphs to Socrates instead of Eryxias.

13
. Accepting the emendations
toutois
for
touto
and
ta chr
ē
mata
for
chr
ē
mata ta chr
ē
sima
in d1.

14
. 394a–395d.

15
. 397e.

16
. Accepting the emendation
katachr
ō
into
in e4.

17
. Some words seem to have been lost in the transmission of the text. Possibly Critias claims that for doing certain things, certain items are always useful: then Socrates asks if some items can be useful for doing wicked things, others for doing good things.

18
. Accepting the conjectural deletion of
ē
(and the comma before it) in c8.

AXIOCHUS

Translated by Jackson P. Hershbell.

Axiochus has come close to dying and was shaken by the experience, despite being familiar with arguments that used to make him laugh at death and at those who feared it. Socrates is summoned to his bedside to administer his usual consolations, of which he has a wide selection. Eventually some of them have the desired effect, and Axiochus welcomes the prospect of death as the release of his divine soul to a better place. He collects his thoughts, and Socrates goes on his way.

This dialogue is an unconventional version of a very conventional genre—the consolation letter. Typical examples include Seneca’s
Consolation for Marcia
and
Consolation for Polybius
and Plutarch’s
Consolation for His Wife.
The Plutarchean
Consolation for Apollonius
is a sort of treasury of consolation arguments, and there are echoes and reflections of the genre in Cicero’s
Tusculan Disputations
I and III, as well as in many other ancient sources, indicating its continuous popularity from at least the third century
B.C.
to the end of the pagan world, before being adapted by Christian writers. Every philosophical school produced arguments of consolation, especially Stoicism, and many letters of consolation freely borrowed arguments from all possible sources, whether or not the ideas were mutually consistent.

It should therefore come as no surprise to see Socrates urging on Axiochus a wide variety of mutually incompatible consolations, including rhetorical and Cynic commonplaces as well as Epicurean, Stoic, and Platonic arguments. Some authors of this genre seem to have been less concerned with whether the arguments were true than with whether they were reassuring: “there are also some authors of consolation letters who combine all these kinds of consolation—for one man is moved by one sort, another by another—like the way I threw them all together in my
Consolation,
for my soul was in a fever and I tried everything to cure it” (Cicero
, Tusculan Disputations
III.76).

The strategy of
Axiochus
seems to be derived from Plato’s
Apology,
where Socrates says that death is either a permanent loss of consciousness or a transition to somewhere else. The arguments which are effective for Axiochus are Stoic (370b–d) and Platonic (371a–372a); “whether above or below, Axiochus, you ought to be happy, if you have lived piously.” But the Cynic harangues and commonplaces (366d–369b) seem to make little impression, and the Epicurean arguments (365d–e and 369b–370b) are quite over his head.

What makes
Axiochus
unconventional is that it is not a letter addressed to someone who has been bereaved, but a dialogue with somebody who is about to lose his own life, a situation in which the problematic emotion is not grief but fear. The author, probably a Platonist writing between 100
B.C.
and 50
A.D.
,
has borrowed characters from earlier Socratic writings to clothe the
consolatio
in the guise of a Socratic dialogue.

D.S.H.

While I was on my way to the Cynosarges and getting near the Ilisus,
[364]
I heard the voice of someone shouting, “Socrates, Socrates!” When I turned around to find out where it was coming from, I saw Clinias the son of Axiochus, running toward the Callirhoe,
¹
together with Damon the musician, and Charmides the son of Glaucon.
²
(Damon was Clinias’ music teacher; Charmides and Clinias were companions, and in love with one another.) So I decided to turn off the main road to meet up with them [b] and get together as quickly as possible. With tears in his eyes, Clinias said:

“Socrates, now’s your chance to show off the wisdom they’re always saying you have! My father has been unwell for a while,
³
and is near the end of his life; and he’s miserable on his deathbed, even though he used to laugh at people who had a phobia about death, and tease them a little. [c] So come and reassure him in your usual way, so that he may meet his fate without complaining, and so that I and the rest of the family can also perform the proper rituals.”

“Well, Clinias, you won’t find me refusing such a reasonable request, especially since what you ask involves religion. Let’s go; if that’s the situation, speed is essential.”

“Just seeing you, Socrates, will revive him; in fact he’s often before managed to rally from this condition.”

After hurrying along the wall to the Itonian gates—he lived near the gates [d] by the Amazon column—we found that Axiochus had already collected his
[365]
senses and was strong in body, though weak in spirit, very much in need of consolation, sobbing and groaning, again and again, as well as weeping and clapping his hands. I looked down at him and said:

“Axiochus, what’s all this? Where’s your former self-confidence, and your constant praise of manly virtues, and that unshakable courage of yours? You’re like a feeble athlete who put on a brave show in training exercises and lost the actual contest! Consider who you are—a man of [b] such an advanced age, who listens to reason, and, if nothing else, an Athenian!—don’t you realize that life is a kind of sojourn in a foreign land (indeed, that’s a commonplace, on everybody’s lips), and that those who have led a decent life should go to meet their fate cheerfully, almost singing a paean of praise? Being so faint-hearted and unwilling to be torn from life is childish and inappropriate for someone old enough to think for himself.”

[c]“True enough, Socrates, I think you’re right. And yet, somehow or other, now that I’m very close to that awful moment, all those powerful and impressive arguments mysteriously lose their strength and I can’t take them seriously; and a certain fear remains which assails my mind in various forms: that I will lose this light of day and these good things, and will lie somewhere or other, unseen and forgotten, rotting, and turning into maggots and wild beasts.”

“In your distraction, Axiochus, you’re confusing sensibility with insensibility, [d] without realizing it. What you say and do involves internal self-contradiction; you don’t realize that you’re simultaneously upset by your loss of sensations and pained by your decay and the loss of your pleasures—as if by dying you entered into another life, instead of lapsing into the utter insensibility that existed before your birth. Just as during the government of Draco or Cleisthenes there was nothing bad at all that concerned you (because you did not exist then for it to concern you), nor will anything [e] bad happen to you after your death (because you will not exist later for it to concern you).

“Away, then, with all such nonsense! Keep this in mind: once the compound is dissolved and the soul has been settled in its proper place, the body which remains, being earthly and irrational, is not the human person. For each of us is a soul, an immortal living being locked up in a mortal
[366]
prison; and Nature has fashioned this tent for suffering—its pleasures are superficial, fleeting, and mixed with many pains; but its pains are undiluted, long-lasting, and without any share of pleasure. And while the soul is forced to share with the sense organs their diseases and inflammations and the other internal ills of the body (since it is distributed among its pores), it longs for its native heavenly aether, nay, thirsts after it, striving [b] upwards in hopes of feasting and dancing there. Thus being released from life is a transition from something bad to something good.”